Case Number 17551

Staunton Hill

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All Rise...

Judge David Johnson couldn't come up with anything that rhymed with "Staunton."

The Charge

In God's name they prey.

Opening Statement

From Cameron Romero, zombie auteur George Romero's son, comes a movie about a
hick family with a deformed child who kills people.

Facts of the Case

It's 1969 and a group of college-aged hippies are on their way to a big
activist rally. Since they're hippies, they have very little money and no
dependable means of conveyance, so they end up stranded on a homestead called
Staunton Hill, run by a large, mean woman, her invalid mother, and her son who
may or may not be inbred.

At first, things don't seem too bad—a drafty barn to sleep in, some
mild hay rashes, and that's about it. But when the Stauntons get their murder
and torture on, things get really uncomfortable.

The Evidence

There's absolutely nothing going on here you haven't seen before, but I'll
hand it to Romero—he takes well-worn territory and makes it
disgusting.

Staunton Hill isn't quite torture porn, but it's very
close…like the Cinemax equivalent. There's plenty of gratuitous action,
but it stops just short of being super hardcore, mainly because the bloodletting
isn't prolonged. However, Romero ensures what gets on screen counts, and the
sequences when the Staunton kid gets a hold of the victims can be genuinely
nasty. It's obvious a large portion of the budget—not astronomical to
begin with, I presume—went straight to the practical effects, as the
violence is rendered impressively. The money shots had me grimacing and turning
away, which is no easy feat.

Unfortunately, besides the gore factor, there isn't much to recommend in
Staunton Hill. A plot twist is tossed in, to keep the story from being
completely derivative, and one of the characters turns out to be
memorable in his sheer douchiness, but that's all. The main characters are as
one-dimensional as any other cannon fodder meatbags in your typical slasher
flick, so when they inevitably do bite the big one, it's just the grotesque
manner in how they are dispatched that elicits an emotional response…which
may in reality be a gag reflex.

The villains aren't that great either. Just sort of boring and familiar. The
mentally challenged oaf kid is your standard-issue dopey redneck, simultaneously
invincible and borderline non-functional. Roly-poly mom makes a lot of noise.
She has a shotgun too.

You want some unsettling violence and great practical gore effects?
Staunton Hill will scratch that itch. Just don't expect any collateral
entertainment.